How to Get Rid of Trolls
by Shinjitsu No Hiro
Summary: Ever wonder how to rid your life of trolls? Read this! It was a dream I had a while back, but I decided to type it up and share it with you.


Plains, covered in short green and brown grasses. Flat land, stretching unbroken for as far as the eye could see, until it met sky. In some places where the water pooled, lakes would form. Seen from above, these lakes looked like sparkling blue gems. Nobody had ever found the end of these plains - at least, not that we could remember.

This was my home. Everyone took turns raising sheep and horses, which could explore the land and eat as much grass as they pleased. Every day, things were perfect.

The land was not flat quite everywhere, though. There were two places where the ground rose up. One was out in the pastures, a tall hill - or was it a mountain? - with a flat top. Nothing grew on top of it, but there was a well-worn trail up the side of it. The other place? It was another tall hill, with a flat top and sides that went straight up and down. On top of this hill was a city where nobody lived, and at the bottom there was another city carved into the sides of the hill. The city at the bottom looked like one that would have been built where it never rained. The roofs were flat, and the buildings were made of tan stone - the same stone as the hill itself. Around this hill was a deep moat with a single bridge crossing it. When it was not our turn to take care of the animals, we lived in this city.

Not everything was perfect, though. Not too long ago, some things called 'trolls' began attacking us when we were out with the sheep at night! Every night, as soon as it was dark, they would start throwing rocks at us. These rocks got bigger and bigger - soon the rocks they were throwing were bigger than the sheep! We could not keep the sheep down in the grassland anymore, so we would go up the trail to the top of the flattop hill out in the pasture every night, as it got dark. Sometimes we were not to the top yet when night fell, so we would carry lamps with purple fire inside of them to show us where we were going. Unfortunately, the trolls can see these too, so they throw their giant rocks at the lamps, and sometimes even hit the sheep.

One morning, at the end of my turn to take care of the sheep, I found out that I could run faster than even our horses! I decided to go out and explore, and maybe find where the trolls were coming from so that we could stop them. What I found was something different.

I ran and I ran, and before the day was done, had run as far as the edge of the plains. They dropped off, straight down like the sides of the hill our city was built in. Old books we had about before we had lived in the city talked about these - they were called 'cliffs'. I wondered if there were cliffs everywhere around the plains, so I ran some more, this time around the edge so that I would always see it.

Before too long, I had circled all around the edge of the plains. There was one place that did not end in a cliff - instead, there was a ridge, like at the top of a mountain, like our old books talked about. This ridge led down, off into the distance. I thought that maybe the prince of our city would like to know that there was a place we had never been and would like to come explore with me. He had just finished helping take care of the sheep, too, so I ran back to our city and asked him if he wanted to come with me. He said he did, so I grabbed his hand and ran, pulling him along, back to the place the ridge was. Together, we started to walk down.

It took a few days, but we found the underlying cause of this ridge. Looking back, we could see that the plains we lived on were at the very top of a very tall mountain. We could hardly see the top, but we could see the ridge leading up and up until it disappeared. Now, though, we were in a place that was much warmer than the plains - and a lot greener. It was something our old books had called a 'jungle'. We were surrounded by plants and flowers, all growing tall and close together, all with very bright colors! There were also animals we had never seen before, except for some very old drawings that did not have names for these animals anymore. There was even water flowing past - something called a 'stream' that we had also never seen, but only read about!

We found a path leading through this jungle and began to follow it. After a few more days, we had come to another place - it was very dry, and there were no plants. It seemed flat, but actually was full of little hills. The ground was tan and very grainy, like someone had broken a giant rock into millions of little pieces and covered the entire ground with it. The books said this was called a 'desert'. In the distance, across the desert, we could see what looked like another cliff. To either side were more mountains that went nearly straight up, but were pale green colors - as if they were covered in short grasses and bushes. Our path did not lead towards those, though, so we decided we would cross this desert and see if we could find anything near the cliff.

As we started to cross the desert, I found I could not run fast anymore. However, as we started to cross, my shape changed - now I looked just like a horse! The prince stared at me for a moment, and then remembered that horses are for riding, even if they are your friends, and he climbed on my back. I carried him across the desert and we got to the cliff. I did not want to carry him back across the desert yet, so I looked up at the cliff and thought... "Maybe if I could fly, I could carry him to the top!" I thought very hard, and some big, feathery wings grew out of my back!

I flapped, and I flapped, but no matter how hard I flapped, my new wings I could not get very far off the ground. I knew that when I had thought about having wings I had grown them, so maybe if I thought about being a different animal, I could be something new! I remembered a picture of an animal that had a long neck, a long tail, four legs with claws at the end of all of them, horns on its head, and large wings. It had been called a 'dragon'. Maybe if I was an animal like that, I would be big enough to fly him up - or my claws would let me just climb! I thought hard again, imagining that I was the animal, and suddenly I was! I climbed up the cliff with the prince on my back, straight to the top.

When we got to the top, I was too tired to carry the prince any more. He climbed off my back, and I turned back into me. Not too far away we could see a wide, black trail with a yellow line with dots going down the middle. It smelled somewhat funny, but it was something easy to follow, so we went to see where it would go. Instead of walking, I was floating in the air behind the prince.

Looking around, I saw two shiny balls stuck on a rock. They looked like they had little animals inside of them. One was a white horse with a white horn - a unicorn! - And a mane and tail that looked like fire and the other looked like an orange dragon with a green belly with fire on its tail. I grabbed the balls and let the animals out...

...And the animals were bigger than we were! The dragon breathed a flame into the air, and then flew away. The unicorn, though, looked at us and knelt down to the prince, offering to let him ride. The fiery mane and tail did not burn us. The prince rode this unicorn along the trail, and I floated along behind them. Before long, we began seeing strange metal creatures with wheels on them and people inside of them. They only moved on this black trail, but they moved much faster than horses! After we passed a few of them, we came to a building with a slanted roof, surrounded with these metal creatures that had no people and were not moving. We went inside of this building and found some people inside, drinking from machines that sprayed water and eating from machines that had bags of food inside.

We asked the people "Where is this? We'vever been here before." They told us that this was called a 'rest stop', and was near the edge of their country. They showed us a picture that had the words 'You Are Here' on it near the edge, and told us this was called a map. Close to the words was something that looked like the cliff we had just climbed, next to a line that they told us was the road we had been walking on - less than an hour's journey to there in these metal creatures they called 'cars'. They pointed to other places on the map that were much farther away and told us they were from these places. This land was huge! The prince and I decided that it would be our turn to care for the sheep before we got back if we did not go home right away, so he rode the unicorn back to the cliff, with me floating along behind it.

When we got to the cliff, the unicorn jumped off it! I floated after it. It was a very long drop, but the unicorn was not hurt from landing. We had noticed that the unicorn had seemed a little fat, and on the way back home, the unicorn had a foal - a baby horse, also white, that had a mane and a tail made of fire, but had no horn like its mother. After the unicorn had her foal, she ran away one night while we were sleeping. The prince wanted to keep the foal, but I thought that was bad. It would have no others of its kind around, and would probably be lonely. The prince argued with me, so eventually I let him have the foal. We took it home with us, following our trail back up to the plains.

A few years later, when we were taking care of the sheep again, the prince and I were walking our sheep up the side of the flattop hill in the pasture. The foal, now big enough to ride, was walking along with us, lighting our way without us having to use a lamp. None of us were using lamps tonight - the foal made things bright enough for everyone to see. The trolls, though, could see our foal too. They started throwing the giant rocks at the foal. Then the foal did something that surprised us all. It turned and kicked the rocks, breaking them into tiny pieces! After that, it turned and faced where the rocks were flying from, and breathed spinning fire out. The spinning fire found the trolls and wrapped around them - now they were all lit up, and were burning, even though the foal's fire had never burned us! The trolls started throwing rocks at each other, because those were the lights that were now closest to them.

After that, the trolls never bothered us again.

(The unicorn is Rapidash, the dragon is Dragonite, and the foal is Ponyta)


End file.
